CEO Report for 2023
As the incoming Acting CEO at MAV, I take deep pleasure in sharing our journey over 2023 with you, our valued community of artists, supporters, and friends.
If there was a theme for 2023, it was emergence. Emergence out of a pandemic state, out of our temporary home at Darebin Arts Centre, into new leadership, and new perspectives. We worked tirelessly to plant the foundational seeds that would guide us boldly out of 2023, and into the future.
2023 was a sustained effort to ensure artists and communities and their livelihood remained at the centre of every conversation possible, and that the incredible lessons learnt and plans laid post-pandemic were not lost. That multicultural artists remained connected to and counted on these lands.
MAV embraced a new approach to programming in 2023, building on the outstanding programs delivered both at home and abroad. Key highlights include Sangam, a festival of diverse performances; Future Reset, in partnership with Vic Health; and the Newprint program, which supported emerging live event producers from culturally diverse backgrounds. We collaborated interstate through the tour of Purbayan Chatterjee and across the shores in South Africa, as Beyond Words sought market intelligence and brought a fresh exchange of knowledge with artists on Yorta Yorta country.
And on one unforgettable day in July six culturally significant Artists Of Colour - Vicki Kinai (PNG), MzRizk (Lebanon), Katherine Gailer (Colombia), Julie Ann Minaii (Japan/Hawaii), Irihipeti Waretini and Bella Waru (Aotearoa) - wove their sacred art forms into one incredible performance featuring 50 live performers, disrupting the Melbourne Museum with their movement, song, ceremonial collaboration, feasting, film and immersive art.
Produced from within the cultural support of a burgeoning Diasporas community, Resonance was not just visually arresting but a triumph; a tapestry of mapping ancestral journeys to the sacred Kulin lands the artists now call home.
Despite post-COVID barriers, MAV remained a backbone of service delivery in Victoria’s creative sector, embodying values around cultural equity and delivering social impact through services such as our Cultural Agency, Auspicing and Avenues of Support. We rode the waves of many challenges, understanding that recovery will take time and well-targeted resources. We learnt through difficult moments and sometimes burnout that our wellbeing must be considered to connect meaningfully with our artistic community.
We secured our future through a new round of multi-year funding beginning in 2025 with a newly rebranded Creative Australia. Our programs have initiated numerous works in 2023, providing critically underrepresented artists with essential resources, guidance, and mentorship to hone their craft and establish their careers in the industry. We worked closely with new and emerging communities to connect them with opportunities that increase participation and economic opportunities while cultivating our legacy communities.
We remain optimistic about the future, while acknowledging and addressing the barriers our culturally diverse artists face and continuing to challenge our very own critical thinking. We must continue to lean toward practices that uplift and empower, that actively dismantle white supremacy and racist systems of oppression on these lands.
We must continue to ‘stand on business’ and build trust. Access to resources across the arts funding landscape remains a serious challenge, and especially brutal for intersectional artists. Unpredictable and extreme weather continues to impact the livelihoods and well-being of local and global communities, disproportionately impacting marginalised communities, refugees, women and First Nations peoples. Our web of trust, cultivated in our shared love of art, is our is our essential toolkit for survival.
Art and artforms that advocate for truth and First Nations representation and promote immigration as a key asset are actually our networks of support, as communities experience displacement, flee war and persecution, or are systematically silenced. We must continue to be driven by this profound commitment to exceptional artists, whose art is crucial to sowing these experiences into our vision of who we want to be as a society.
We are deeply grateful to our funders, partners, sponsors, and donors who enable us to create such positive social impact and visibility for critically underrepresented artists, not just through financial means, but through connection, networks, care, advice and opportunities to further our vision. Thank you to the MAV Team for your hard work and dedication. It is through your safeguarding of artistic expression, care for artists, and ability to hold space that MAV continues to grow and redefine the role of multicultural artists in the creative sector and in history.